Welcome back to the start of a new workweek. If you enjoyed the Oscars last night, did you know that it marked the third time David Rockwell has served as the award show’s production designer? Rockwell previously handled the 2010 and 2011 Academy Awards ceremonies, both at the Dolby Theatre (formerly the Kodak Theatre) in Hollywood. This year, Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles was transformed into an indoor-outdoor venue to help improve both guest and air circulation (and the historic structure’s high ceilings certainly helped).

Here’s the news you need to know today:

Autodesk provided a digital twin of the pre-fire Notre Dame Cathedral to speed recovery

The race is on to rebuild Paris’s fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral before the 2024 Summer Olympics, and the French government is getting a big boost from Autodesk. Shortly after the construction fire that felled Notre Dame’s spire and roof in 2019, Autodesk president and CEO Andrew Anagnost began directing resources to support the UNESCO World Heritage Site’s preservation. To that end, they contracted the Parisian Art Graphique & Patrimoine, who had already collected enough material to create a digital twin model of the building before it was desecrated.

Autodesk will reportedly provide its services and five years of support to the federal reconstruction body at no cost.

H/t to Engineering News-Record

MIT’s Senseable City Lab maps Brazil’s favelas with LiDAR

The Senseable City Lab at MIT, led by Carlo Ratti, has unveiled its latest project: An immersive scan of Rocinha, an informal settlement with over 100,000 residents that stands as the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro. Approximately one million people live in such settlements worldwide, and by using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) remote sensing to map Rocincha, the team hoped to document the urban rhythms and infrastructure needs of a mini-city built with no underlying urban plan.

To that end, Favelas 4D, created in collaboration with BRTech 3D, offers a fully traversable model of the settlement.

Explore a virtual version of Rio’s favelas here.

North America’s largest roofing company develops recyclable shingles

Asphalt roofing shingles are notoriously hard to recycle and once they’re pulled off of a roof, typically end up being squished into pavers; however, 11 million tons of these slow-degrading squares still end up in landfills annually.

Now, GAF, the largest roofing company in North America, has announced that it has patented and will be testing a process to recycle those shingles. While the asphalt itself can be extracted and reused, the granules of filler used in roofing tiles will only weaken a shingle if it’s reintroduced. To that end, GAF is taking old shingles, cutting them up, removing the impurities, then grinding them down and supplementing their products with the result.

H/t to Fast Company

Apple announces its first East Coast tech campus

Hot off of their latest product line launches, today Apple announced that it would be investing $1 billion to build a new corporate campus in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Engineering research, machine learning, and software development will take precedent at the new campus in Raleigh, which will house up to 3,000 employees once completed and span over one million square feet.

Work on the project will begin immediately, and Apple will rent local office space for employees until the new campus is open and ready for occupation. No architect has been revealed yet at the time of writing.

H/t to CNBC

MoMA protestors will take their grievances inside the museum

After Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry responded to the ongoing Strike MoMA protests on April 14 by claiming the International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-Imperialist Feelings (IIAAF) wanted to dismantle the museum entirely, the group is now pledging to march into the building proper.

Concerned with the ties of the museum’s board members to the defense industry, unfair working conditions, and economic and racial inequity furthered by MoMA, the IIAAF is currently staging weeks of protests and learning opportunities outside of the building’s doors. Now, in response to Lowry’s letter and the museum’s removal of free admission Fridays, the IIAAF will stage a tour titled “The Ruins of Modernity: From the City to the Museum” that will end inside of MoMA this Friday, April 30.

H/t to Hyperallergic

Honolulu is looking for a developer to build a neighborhood around the Aloha Stadium Hui Hilina’i  

Honolulu is the latest city looking to build up around its hometown stadium and create a mixed-use district to encourage year-round occupancy. In December of 2020, Hawaii shortlisted three development teams to design and deliver the new Aloha Stadium Hui Hilina’I, and a winner should be announced later this year (with construction tentatively slated to finish in 2023).

However, that’s just for the stadium proper, and Honolulu is also reportedly looking for a developer to partner with to build out a 78-acre Aloha Stadium Entertainment District. Hotels, housing, offices, retail, and entertainment spaces are all included, and Hawaii hopes to award the contract in 2022, with the project timeline reportedly expected to take up to two decades to deliver.

H/t to The Real Deal